


Falling

by MillyVeil



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Captivity, Clint Barton Needs a Hug, Clint is a wet mop in part 2, Consent Issues, Hallucinations, Hurt Clint Barton, Hurt No Comfort, Hurt very little comfort, Phil feels bad for doing the right thing, Sleep Deprivation, Waking up badly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-08
Updated: 2020-09-06
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:40:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25788223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MillyVeil/pseuds/MillyVeil
Summary: Sleep deprivation is a cruel kind of torture, and for Clint the hardship continues after he’s rescued.
Relationships: Clint Barton & Phil Coulson
Comments: 53
Kudos: 120





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ranni](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ranni/gifts).



> For Ranni, because she's an enabler (in the best sense of the word!! ❤️) Working on Replay was beyond me when running on 36 hours without sleep, so I wrote this instead when I couldn't sleep. Not beta'ed, and written very quickly, so it's probably riddled with weird disjointed stuff. Did I mention I was running on 36 hours with no sleep? I wasn't anywhere near as sleep deprived as poor Clint, but man, you're really not firing on all cylinders when you're like that.

Clint’s eyes fly open and he flails as his brain suddenly catches up to the fact that he’s losing his balance again. The stool wobbles precariously under his feet, but by the thinnest of margins he manages to keep it from tipping over.

Fuck. His heart pounds painfully in his chest. That was close.

He keeps his arms out to the sides trying to find more stability, but they start to burn and shake almost immediately and he has to lower them. He doesn’t know how long since they tossed him into this windowless room, he lost count after forty-something hours when lack of sleep made his sense of time run and bleed like ink on wet paper. He does know one thing, though. Forty-something hours was a long fucking time ago.

This isn't the longest he’s ever gone without sleep, not by a longshot, but those other times he’d had chemical aids to keep him going. The only things he’s got at his disposal here are the incentives his hosts are so graciously providing. Shouting. Fists and boots in strategic places. Stinging cold water from a high-pressure hose. And now, for the past god knows how many long, excruciating hours, _this_.

He exhales with a shudder and lifts his shaking hands to scrub at his eyes. He’s not restrained. No cuffs, no ropes, nothing, they’d just made him get up on this fucking chair. It's a deceptively innocent thing; standing on it shouldn't be that hard, but when you're sleep deprived to the degree Clint is right now it's almost impossible. His balance is shot. His legs tremble and burn from having to continuously correct for the tiny unbalance in the stool’s legs. And his eyes keep sliding shut. 

It had taken some effort on their part to convince him to get up that first time, and then some more to make him stay. He hadn't made it easy on them, but every time he’d gotten down, he'd paid for it in pain before being patiently put back up. He'd kept challenging them, because it's not like he can’t take a beating, and they didn't really seem like they were putting too much energy into seriously hurting him, just enough to convince him to get with the program. So, he'd kept at it, but when the accumulation of minor injuries had reached a point where he'd be hampered by them when he tried to escape, he’d stopped and accepted that for now he was apparently going to be standing on that goddamn thing.

By then, he'd already been deep into sleep deprivation. That hadn’t kept him from engaging in scintillating conversation with them. They hadn’t seemed to appreciate his wit quite as much as he did. But he'd been flagging fast, and when fatigue had started to mess with his words, making him stutter and slur, making the wrong ones come out, he’d stopped that, too. Now he’s pretty much just trying to stay awake and upright, because even when he's concentrating on keeping his balance, the stool feels like it’s moving under his feet in slow, wavelike motions. He thinks Phil would probably disapprove if he brained himself by falling eighteen inches off a fucking chair. 

They'd left him mostly alone during the first days of his captivity, only showing up to rouse him every time he dozed off. But now they're a constant presence behind him, there to make sure he doesn’t get down from his precarious perch. Back when the chair game started, millenia ago, he’d still had enough muscle control to twist and look over his shoulder without falling over. They had brought in a folding table and sat down around it, on chairs that looked a hell of a lot more sturdy than the one he’s standing on. There had been beer bottles, and one of them had pulled out a deck of cards as they settled in to wait. 

They're still waiting. Clint is pretty sure he knows what for. They’re tenderizing him, softening him up ahead of whatever questions they’re going to throw at him once they deem him broken enough.

Something streaks by at the very edge of his field of vision, and instinct has Clint turning his head sharply, but there’s nothing to see this time either. The stool gives an exaggerated wobble. It’s a tense few seconds before he’s sure he won’t go head over heels.

The room around him has been steadily shrinking, the fog in his head slowly eating away at the edges and there's a world out there, he knows it on an intellectual level, but the only thing that feels real now is the wall, the stool, and the patch of concrete floor in front of him. And how tired he is.

He squeezes his eyes shut, then opens them wide. Does it again. His eyes haven’t worked quite right since… since a long time. He can't focus on anything for more than a few seconds, and the painfully harsh fluorescent light falls and folds weirdly around every edge and angle. It gives everything around him an eerie, otherworldly glow. It would be almost pretty if he wasn’t so miserably tired he wanted to cry.

But he’s not going to cry, he’s just going to wait for Phil and SHIELD to find him, they’ll be here soon, and the moment they show up, he’s going to get down off this thing and smash it to pieces. Then he’s going to find a dark, quiet little corner in whatever transporter they rode in on and sleep for about sixteen weeks. Anyone who wakes him up will get a knife in the eye.

They’ll be here soon, he keeps telling himself. He just needed to hold out a little longer. He clings to those words like a mantra. A little longer. Hold on just a little longer.

He jerks his head up, feels the edge of the stool under his foot as he lurches to correct his position. Fuck. He hadn’t even noticed his eyes sliding shut this time, and he’s going to lose this game very soon. He’s been fighting sleep for an eternity already, and he knows that at some point all the willpower in the world won’t keep his brain from deciding ‘screw this, I don’t care that I’m standing on a fucking chair, I’m clocking out’.

His guards are talking behind him, but through it all they haven’t said more than a handful of words to him, and most of them have been some variation of 'get up', so it's just a drone to him at this point, joining the monotone buzz of the lights overhead.

He curses as he staggers again, his body automatically trying to counter the movement when he starts listing again. God, he wants to sit down. For just a moment. One goddamn moment. He’d tried to when standing up had started to become a real problem, because he was technically still _on_ the chair, right? But they had immediately started encouraging him to stand back up. Using a nightstick. Every single attempt after that had resulted in the same, and Clint hates them so much. He’s _so_ tired. 

He takes a slow, shaky breath and squints at the concrete wall in front of him, tries one more time to find something to concentrate on, something to keep his his eyes from closing and mind from thinking too hard about how miserable he is, but there’s still nothing. Not a single crack, not the tiniest patch of peeling paint. He’s under no illusion that his position facing the wall is anything but deliberate. He’s deprived of anything stimulating, anything that could help keep him awake. The only noteworthy thing about the disgustingly bland wall is that it's moving slowly in and out, like a living, breathing thing. He knows it's not real, he’s been seeing things for a while now, but it’s still unsettling in a visceral way, and he has to concentrate on not swaying with it. 

There's a hiss of another beer bottle being opened behind him. He swallows to get some moisture back into his dry mouth. They’ve fed him water a few times, but it’s long ago now, and he's parched. He’s pretty sure the only reason for their kindness is that they don’t want dehydration to finish the job before sleep deprivation does. He doesn’t care why he gets it. Water is water. But of course the bastards hadn’t been in the least interested in letting him get down to take a piss. Tending to it hadn’t exactly been the highlight of his day, especially since two of them had circled around and been very liberal with their commentary, but he’s done far worse things in front of a far larger audience, so it’s not like it had been a big deal.

Being tired like this is. It’s a _huge_ deal, and he feels sick from it. He’s been cold-sweating for hours and the trembling is getting worse. He shifts his weight a little, tries to find more stability, some way to take the strain off his knees, his back. Standing up this long hurts deep in his bones. The chair wobbles under him again, and it’s an even closer call this time. He squeezes his eyes shut against the tears that are suddenly threatening for real. It’s just lack of sleep, he reminds himself. Just lack of sleep. They’re _not_ fucking breaking him. He just has to hold on a little longer, but his head is pounding, and all he wants in life right now is to close his eyes for a moment. He’s not looking to sleep, honestly, just… rest his eyes. But he grits his teeth and forces them to stay open, because he knows that if he closes them more than five seconds right now it won’t be rest, it will be instant sleep, and then Phil is going to disapprove. Clint doesn't care what most people think of him, but Phil is one of the very few exceptions, so he tries really hard to ignore the overwhelming demands from his body that he needs to sleep. Now. 

And Clint Barton is nothing if not stubborn, so he manages for a while. He keeps having increasingly close calls, but he stays on his feet.

Until he doesn’t. He topples sideways off the stool, but manages to twist and get some control of his descent. Pain shoots up his stiff joints as his feet hit the cold floor. He's almost able to remain standing, but the stool has turned over and rolls after him, tangling his feet. That's all it takes to bring him down, and he lands heavily on his hands and knees. He stays there and drops his head. His arms are shaking. Everything feels distant. Even the surge of adrenaline feels off, the effects of it unable to fully pierce through the fatigue.

He doesn’t even hear them approach, but he’s suddenly hauled to his feet with brutal force. His eyes remain stubbornly close, but he slurs a hoarse curse at them and thier whore mothers. At least that's one thing he doesn't need any higher brain functions to do. He stumbles heavily, half-falls against someone, and it's only their grip on him that keeps him on his feet. An arm comes around his back, pressing him against the body that goes with it. 

“Hello there, sweetheart,” a voice drawls. “Looking for some fun?”

“Sure," he rasps. He’s clumsy and uncoordinated, but through some unlikely luck he manages to drive his knee into the man’s groin. There's a sharp, pained curse, and then Clint finds himself sprawling on the floor again. His grin feels manic as he squints up at the man. “Was it good for you too, baby?” 

The words sound weird in his ears, distorted like an old record played at the wrong speed, but the meaning must come through just fine, because the man snarls and moves in. Clint is too slow to roll away from the kick, and when pain explodes in his gut the queasiness tips over into violent nausea. It rushes up his throat and he's dimly satisfied that they all take a sharp step back to keep the vomit from splattering over their shoes. An wet, out of place giggle escapes him when manages to suck in a shallow breath. Fuck you, he tells the part of his brain that cringes at the crazed sound, I'm like a gazillion hours into sleep deprivation, I'm allowed to giggle if I want.

They wait just long enough for him to stop retching before dragging him back up. Clint catches a glimpse of the guy he nailed. He has retreated to their table, leaning against it half-folded over and glaring at him. Between gasps Clint calls him and his asshole friends every name in the book, but he gets no further reaction. What he gets is another cursory beating from the remaining two, then he’s herded back to the damn stool and forced back up. The deep, cramping ache keeps him from standing up fully, and it’s hard to find his center of gravity when none of his muscles are interested in putting in the extra work.

The adrenaline and the pain had roused him a little, but it doesn’t last; all too soon exhaustion creeps back. He feels himself start to sway on his feet again. He tries to stop, but he overcompensates, and he ends up off the stool again. After another disinterested beating, he’s back on it. Now that he's fallen a couple of times, his body is suddenly not interested in staying up on the stool any more, and just minutes later, he falls again. They drag him up and put him back.

He falls. He's put back up. He falls. He's put back up. It goes on and on. Clint keeps cursing them every time their hands land on him. After a while he has no idea what the's saying, but he learned from the best - his father, Trickhot, Barney, the mercs on the street, the guys in the barracks, Nat - so he knows it’s good stuff. 

Behind him, Natasha sighs, annoyed. He blinks and tries to remember where he is. He attempts to look around, but his head rolls on his neck, his muslces rubbery. It makes the pounding in his head worse, and he presses his hand against the side of it. It feels like his brain is trying to break it open and escape. He wants to escape, too, but he's not allowed to leave, he's just allowed to fall.

Another painful impact, and his mouth fills with the taste of blood. The sensation of falling had registered, but it had been far away, unimportant. Everything is unimportant, except for the dusty concrete that is cool and wonderful under his cheek. 

There's jostling and pain when someone grabs his hair. When his brain engages again, he's back on the stool, and two of them are keeping him upright. They're ignoring him, speaking to one another like he's not there. Clint can't place the language. He tries for a moment, then he gets stuck in the way it sounds like they’re talking in harmonies. Then something slips over his head. He ducks away, but it follows, settles around his neck. It’s not until his stalled-out brain has mulled over the sensation for a disturbing number of seconds that the dull gears in his head finally lock. And when they do, panic flares up like lightning.

Clint shoves at the person next to him, claws at the rope with clumsy fingers. He tries to pull it off, but it’s too tight, and it’s getting tighter. It’s a noose. They’ve put a _noose_ around his neck, and God, he was wrong, there will be no questions, they’re going to string him up and kick the stool out from under his feet. He’s going to die here.

He stumbles from his attempts to get the rope off, and someone’s hands steady him. A second later the rope tightens abruptly, pulls upward, and a choked, wheezing sound escapes him. He goes to his toes, tiptoes clumsily to keep his balance as the stool shifts under him. He's not pulled off his feet, just high enough that the rope is cutting off most of his air. He does his best to stay on his toes, but he can't maintain the position for more than a few seconds. He sinks back down, grabs frantically for the length of taut rope that’s snaking up to the ceiling beam overhead. He tries to use it to hold himself up, but the slip knot is at the back of his neck and the position is precarious. Then the steadying hands on him disappear, and he knows what that means. They’re going to kick the stool away. He’ll feel the jolt any moment.

Now. Now. _Now._

But they don’t. They just stand there and watch him struggle and fail again and again to stay on his toes, then they return to their table and their card game and their beer.

Clint keeps wobbling, keeps choking when he can’t hold himself up enough.

“A little longer,” Phil says over the comms. “Keep it together a little longer, Barton. I’m coming for you.”

Clint realizes he’s let his arms drop at some point, and he fumbles for the rope. It’s a struggle, his arms are so heavy, and everything in him wants to just let go, wants to sit down, lie down, close his eyes and go away. He wants it to stop, just stop, he can’t do it any longer. Losing his balance might be preferable to this. But Phil said to hold on, and his order have always been the ones to follow, so Clint forces his burning, shaking muscles to cooperate a little longer.

But in the end, it’s futile. Not even the rope or Phil Coulson’s orders are enough to keep sleep deprivation and gravity from getting the upper hand. Clint eyes snap open as he lists backwards. He flings his arms out for something to grab and takes a sharp, unthinking step back to regain his balance. There’s nothing but air under his foot, and he knows in that split-second that this is it, it's all over. He waits for the snap of the rope, for his air to be cut off fully and for the dying to start, but instead he slams into the floor. The impact drives the air he didn’t think he had left out of him.

They wrench him up off the floor again. He hangs in their grips, his numb legs refusing to support him for the longest time. The rope is gone, like it never was there. Was it really there? He’s back on the stool and cranes his neck to look at the ceiling, but his head spins and he can’t remember what he’s looking for, so he closes his eyes.

A little longer, he tells himself. Hold on just a little longer.

There's a moment of blessed darkness behind his lids, cool and silent, then he’s suddenly in Manila, tumbling from a rain-slick rooftop, he's at Carson's, falling from the tightrope without a safety net below, he’s in a helicopter, dropping out of the sky, pilot dead and alarms screaming, and all Clint can do is wait for the impact because he’s twenty-three and Phil hasn’t put him through flight school yet.

“They’re not coming for you,” Loki whispers. 

“They’re not coming,” Barney whispers. 

“They’re not coming,” every nightmare he’s ever had whispers. “No one is coming.” 

“They’re wrong,” his father says next to his ear, his voice cutting cleanly through the rising static in Clint’s head. ”I’m coming for you.

When the pain hits this time, it’s old and familiar.

* * *

It doesn't stop. They keep forcing him back up. Clint doesn’t remember his wrist breaking when it's caught awkwardly under him. He doesn’t remember the sick crunch of teeth when his face hits the floor. He doesn’t remember his captors leaving when he finally can't stand up long enough for them to get him back up on the chair, no matter what they do to him. He doesn’t remember the door being kicked open by the STRIKE team. Doesn’t remember the medevac or arriving at SHIELD. But he remembers one thing. It’s hazy and flickers like disjointed snapshots in his head, but he knows.

Phil. Phil is there. He came. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  ~~The comfort part is up!~~ I fail so hard at comfort. There’s some, but honestly, it’s mostly angst.
> 
> TW: Please note that there are aspects of this part that move in a gray area when it comes to consent. Read the end note for more details if you think this is something you might want to avoid. There's nothing violent, nothing that's done with anything but good intentions.

It’s five a.m. and the SHIELD medical wing is silent around Phil, dormant again after the activities that had been triggered when they’d brought Clint in.

He downs the last drops of cold coffee from the paper cup and drops it in the trashcan. He briefly toys with the thought of getting more from the staff’s break room at the end of the corridor, but after a moment’s deliberation, he decides against it, because the watery brew must have been sitting on that hot plate since yesterday morning, judging by the burnt aftertaste in his mouth.

He looks over his shoulder when he hears a muted clatter. That sounded suspiciously much like it had come from Clint’s room that Phil had left a few minutes ago to talk to the doctor.

He heads back and stops at the closed door, listens for a moment. He hears nothing from inside.

He tries to be quiet when he pulls the door open. Inside, the room is dark, the lights have been turned off to let Clint sleep in peace. And he _had_ been sleeping, but in the light that falls in from the corridor, Phil sees he’s awake now, sitting hunched in the bed, bracketed on both sides by the raised bedrails. The bed sheet lies pooled in his lap.

Clint looks sick; pale and hollow-eyed, and the rings under his eyes are so dark he looks bruised. There are real bruises on his face, too. Some he must have acquired right at the beginning of his captivity, others right at the end; the color range is evidence of that. His lip has been split bad enough that the doctors have put four stitches in it.

Phil knocks lightly on the doorframe. “Hey.”

Clint doesn’t react. He’s looking at the splint that wraps around his forearm and down over his knuckles. There doesn’t seem to be a whole lot going on behind his unblinking eyes, and Phil suddenly isn’t sure he’s awake at all.

He steps inside and closes the door behind him. The room falls back into darkness. The only source of light is the faint display of the IV infusion pump that Clint isn’t hooked up to any longer, but it’s enough for Phil to spot something lying on the floor next to the bed. He picks it up. Clint’s phone. Phil had brought it, and it must have been what he’d heard. Fine cracks have spread like a spider’s web across the screen, leaving it near opaque. He brushes it off against his leg and sets it on the table next to the bed.

“Why don’t you lie down and get some more rest,” he suggests gently. “You’re long overdue for a nap.”

Clint needs a lot more than a nap; he needs many, many hours of uninterrupted sleep, and even then Phil knows he’ll be dragging for days while his body and brain recovers. Sleep deprivation throws the whole system for a nasty loop.

“What happened to my arm?” There’s an odd lack of inflection to Clint’s words.

Phil pulls the visitor’s chair closer and sits down. “We were kind of hoping you’d be able to tell us that.”

Clint’s eyes remain on the splint for another few seconds, then he raises his head. “Oh. Okay.” He squints around the dark room like he’s never seen it before. “What time is it?”

“A little past five in the morning. Are you in pain? Did it wake you up?”

Clint starts to nod, but halfway through he turns it into a small shake of his head, and Phil suppresses a sigh. 

“You need to rest, and pain isn’t going to help with that.” He reaches for the call button. “I’ll ask them to get you something for it.”

“No drugs.”

“Clint—“

“No drugs,” Clint repeats more forcefully.

This time Phil doesn’t even try to keep the sigh back, but he relents. “Fine. No drugs. For now,” he adds. “If it’s keeping you from sleeping, we’re going to revisit this conversation, understood?” 

Clint nods. His fingers have started to worry absently at one of the Velcro straps that secure the splint. The movement looks mechanical, like there isn’t much intent behind it, but Phil wants to nip any idea of taking it off in the bud.

“Leave that alone,” he admonishes.

Clint stops, his fingers curled in mid-motion. His shoulders sag. “I’m tired,” he mumbles.

“I know. Lie down and go back to sleep.”

He looks up at Phil. “I’m so _tired_ ,” he repeats, and this time it’s a plea, like he doesn’t have the first clue what to do about it even though the solution is obvious.

Before Phil can answer, the sound of muffled footsteps are heard from outside, and Clint’s head comes up sharply. A shadow passes across the strip of light under the door as the person continues walking toward some unknown destination. The room falls back into silence, only the dry ticking of the wall clock above the door is heard. Clint keeps watching the door, and Phil wonders if there’s some remnant of mission-related hypervigilance at play here, if a part of Clint’s compromised brain has yet to pick up on the fact that it’s over, that he can relax.

But then he suddenly realizes that Clint isn’t really looking at the door any longer. His focus has slipped, lost in an empty no man’s land in the middle distance. His face gradually relaxes, and with every slow blink his eyes remain closed longer and longer, until they finally don’t open at all. Phil leans in and puts his hand lightly on his shoulder to guide him back down before he topples over, but the moment he makes contact, every sign of sleep evaporates from Clint.

He wrenches out from under Phil’s touch. “Motherfucker, get off me,” he snarls. He twists away, ducks his head, draws his arms in tightly and protectively against his chest. “Motherfucker,” he hisses again. “Fucking… fucking mother _fucker_.” The defensive position is a stark contrast to the vicious tone.

Phil holds up his hands even though Clint can’t see it with the way he has turned away. “Okay,” he says. “It’s okay. I won’t touch you.”

He receives another strained curse, then the room goes silent, save for Clint’s ragged breathing. Phil sits back in the chair and waits it out.

It takes a while, but little by little Clint’s defensive posture softens, until he finally uncurls fully with a shaky exhalation and slumps back down.

“You okay?” Phil asks quietly.

“Sorry. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to.” Clint’s eyes well up, and he hides behind his arm. “I didn’t _mean_ _to_.”

“I know,” Phil says. Emotional regulation is one of the first casualties of sleep deprivation, and at this stage of the game it’s really no wonder Clint is all over the place. “I shouldn’t have startled you. It’s okay. Go to sleep.”

“It’s not,” Clint moans. “It’s not okay. Everything keeps— Everything keeps moving.”

Phil doesn’t know if he’s being literal, or if it’s just a vague description of the cognitive and temporal slippage he must be feeling acutely right now.

“Clint,” he says gently. “You haven’t slept for days. It’s no wonder you’re feeling a bit off.”

“I’m tired. Phil, I’m really, really tired.”

“Then close your eyes and go to sleep.”

Clint lets out a slow, shuddering breath and wipes his arm over his face. He lets it drop to rest across his chest, and hallelujah, he actually closes his eyes. Phil was starting to feel a little like a broken record here.

A moment later the tip of Clint’s tongue comes out to swipe slowly across his lacerated lip, and he gives a sharp wince. Apparently the sting is all it takes for the tears to start running again. He rolls away from Phil with a frustrated, miserable groan, both hands pressed against his face.

He makes a sound that tries very hard to be a self-derisive laugh, but it falls painfully short of the mark. “Jesus. I’m so messed up right now.”

Phil huffs. “This? This is nothing. I went batshit crazy on a car once when I hit eighty-eight hours because it looked at me the wrong way. It involved a baseball bat. Turns out the car was Fury’s. He wasn’t pleased.”

Clint gives an unsteady, watery laugh at that. He doesn't lower his hands from his face. “How’d they get me?”

Phil grimaces. “I hate to say this, but bad luck, mostly.”

It’s his job to expect the unexpected, but even he can’t foresee someone down the street getting a brand new toy for his birthday, a camera drone, and spotting Clint on the roof. He doesn’t know if it had been neighborhood loyalty, or fear of what would happen if Peterson found out the information had been withheld, but for whatever reason, the bad guys had gotten wind of it in minutes, and by the time anyone had realized what was going down, all of Clint’s retreat routes had been cut off.

The first sign of trouble had been his sharp ‘Shit! over the comm link just moments before the sound of desperate scrambling. Then a loud noise had been heard, followed by a thud and the kind of silence that made everyone in the surveillance van freeze.

Phil starts from there. He tells Clint how they’d moved out immediately, but by the time they’d gotten up on the roof, he’d been nowhere to be found. When the team had entered Peterson’s house down the road, all the main players had been gone, too. The only people left inside had been the staff, who had all been too afraid to talk. They had found the entrance to an elaborate network of tunnels in the basement, several of them surfacing miles away, and that’s where the trail had gone cold. When they found it again, four whole days had passed. Phil keeps it general, glosses over most details. He suspects Clint’s long-term memory is Teflon-coated from fatigue, so they’re going to have to go through this again, anyway.

He continues telling the story, and he’s halfway through when Clint rolls to his back with a shuddery sigh. Phil didn’t think it was possible, but he’s looking even more exhausted than before. Clint lies there blinking slowly at the dark ceiling.

Up to the moment when they’d found Clint in that room, they hadn’t actually known if he was still alive or if his body had already been dispatched of, lost forever in a concrete tomb somewhere. Phil thinks the only reason he hadn’t met that fate was that Peterson had wanted to know who Clint was working for, so he could do to them what he usually did to anyone he thought might want to move in on his business: target their wives, their children, their friends and colleagues to dissuade them of the notion in the most gruesome ways, Mexican cartel style.

It’s a bit of a mystery why Peterson hadn’t leaned harder on Clint to get that information. Phil knows from a disturbing number of post-mortem photos included in the pre-op intel package that Peterson had zero compunction with the kind of torture that would get fast results. Peterson is too dead to ask, so until Clint is lucid enough to maybe shed some light on it, Phil is left to speculate. But to be quite honest, he doesn’t care much, he’s just grateful he hadn’t found Clint in worse shape.

He glances up and sees that Clint’s eyes have closed at some point. The depth and cadence of his breathing lets Phil knows he’s slipping back under. He puts his elbows on his knees and runs his hands through his hair. “And they all lived happily ever after,” he mumbles, skipping the rest.

He sits with his head in his hands and allows himself to finally acknowledge his own fatigue. He isn’t sleep deprived anywhere near as bad as Clint, but two successive nights without much sleep is still two successive nights without much sleep. A shower and a bed sound like heaven right now, pure heaven, and now that Clint is asleep and hopefully won’t wake until late this evening, Phil will leave.

He just needs a few more minutes to find the energy to move.

He hears the door open and looks up to see a nurse poke her head in. She’s nothing but a dark outline against the brightness of the corridor behind her.

“Everything alright in here?” she asks quietly. 

Phil sits up, blinking at the light. “He woke up,” he says and pitches his own voice equally quiet, “but he just fell asleep again.”

She comes inside and pulls the door closed behind her. Her steps are almost soundless on the floor when she walks over to Phil and hands him a bottle of water and a plastic-wrapped little package. A homemade sandwich.

“Figured you might need something,” she just says. She looks down at Clint. A small, crooked smile passes her face. “Poor thing. He just always seems to get himself into trouble, doesn’t he?”

Not really, Phil almost says, but he doesn’t.

Clint doesn’t get injured all that often, he’s too good at what he does. But Hawkeye’s track record in Medical, real or not, is part of SHIELD mythology by now, and Clint likes to fan the flames of that myth. He finds the ridiculous claims of his alleged mishaps outrageously funny. But that’s not all there it to it, though. Clint has a wicked sense of humor, but he’s not a class clown by any means, and Phil has long suspected that one reason he likes to perpetuate that myth is that the image of him as accident-prone and somewhat clumsy makes it easier for people to not think too hard about what he actually does for SHIELD out there.

“Will you stay long?” the nurse asks. “No offense, but you look like you need some sleep, too.”

Phil gives her a wan smile. “It’s been a long day.” _Five_ long days. Four of them spent not knowing. “I’m heading out soon.” 

“I’ll check in on him later, but just buzz if you need something before you leave.” She indicates the call button with a nod of her head.

“Thank you, I will.” Phil nods towards the sandwich. “And thank you for this.”

“You’re welcome.” She heads to the door. “Let’s hope he gets a good night’s sleep now.” She checks her watch. “A good _day’s_ sleep,” she amends.

* * *

Clint doesn’t get a good day’s sleep. He doesn’t even get fifteen minutes before he jerks awake with a hoarse cry, his splinted arm slamming into the bedrail right where Phil is still sitting cradling his head. The impact makes the bed rattle violently and Phil flinches almost as bad as Clint.

He leans back sharply, takes himself out of striking range, because for a moment he’s sure Clint is going after someone who isn’t here except for in his head. But then he sees Clint’s good hand fumble for the bedrails and grip them. His knuckles are white.

“Easy,” Phil says, grateful it comes out sounding calm and steady despite the way his heart is rabbiting from the surge of adrenaline. “It’s okay. You’re safe.”

“Phil?" Clint gasps. Despite the violent wake up, his eyes are still screwed shut, and he presses himself into the mattress.

Phil laces his fingers together in his lap to keep from reaching out, unwilling to provoke another reaction like last time. “I’m right here. You’re okay.”

“Can I sit down? I wanna sit down.”

“You can do whatever you want. You’re home. Open your eyes, and you’ll see you’re in Medical. It’s just you and me here.”

Clint moans. “I can’t do it.”

“Yes, you can. Open your eyes.”

“I can’t. I can’t do it anymore. I _can’t_.”

Clint’s voice grows more and more distressed with every word, and Phil suddenly knows he’s not talking about opening his eyes. They’d recovered video footage that showed parts of Clint’s ordeal, and Phil knows how hard he had fought to stay on his feet, to not fall asleep.

“It’s okay, you don’t have to,” he assures Clint. “You don’t have to do anything except go back to sleep.”

It’s like Phil’s words flip a switch in Clint’s head. The desperation bleeds out of his body abruptly, leaves it heavy and limp. 

“Phil?” he mumbles.

“Yes?”

“What happened to my arm?”

Teflon, check.

“You hurt it. It’ll be fine in no time, don’t worry.”

Clint nods, like the non-answer explains everything. Then his brow slowly pulls down in a petulant frown. “Stupid Natasha."

“Pretty sure she’s innocent this time."

There’s no answer. Clint’s drop back into sleep is damn near vertical.

* * *

It happens again. Clint goes from sleep to flailing panic so fast Phil can almost feel the concussive shock of it. This time there’s no getting through to Clint, no soothing or talking him down. He’s disoriented and hostile, doesn’t know where he is or why he’s there. The minimal silver lining to the whole horrible thing is that his body is beyond sustaining that kind of intensity for long, so it’s just a matter of minutes before he’s out again. 

After he wakes the same way a third time, Phil calls the nurse, who calls a doctor, who calls another doctor. 

They stand outside Clint’s room and the doctors cluck their tongues, talk about hypnic jerks, sleep stages, possible sedation. Phil respects Clint’s baseline of no drugs unless absolutely necessary, but right now Clint is too far gone to know the difference. Phil is his medical proxy, and this is one time he needs to override Clint’s wishes. It’s not a decision he takes lightly, but this is what he has to do. It’s kinder than letting him wake up in a panic again and again. And it’s far kinder than letting sleep deprivation spin him off into a psychosis. Phil doesn’t want to take that risk.

He rejects IV administration right off the bat. Clint’s reaction to touch earlier doesn’t bode well for anyone trying to put a needle in him. Phil can remove the staff from the equation easy enough – he can put an IV in just fine – but he wants to avoid causing Clint unnecessary stress. For that same reason he keeps an injection as backup for now and suggests oral administration. It will take longer time for it to kick in, but the risk will be substantially lower for everyone involved.

No one protests, and while the nurse goes to collect the sleeping pill, Phil calls Natasha. She’s out of the country, trying to insinuate herself into the life of her latest target, but it has yet to really go anywhere, and Phil has kept her updated all along. 

“How’s he doing,” Natasha says in greeting, her voice crackling and hissing with static over the poor satellite link. 

“Physically, not too awful.” Phil glances into the dark, quiet room. “The rest? Not great.”

“Is he awake?”

“Not right now. But he keeps waking up badly.”

“And let me guess, he’s nixing anything to help him stay asleep?”

“Yes. But he needs it, so he’s getting it anyway.”

The line goes silent as she processes the information. “How long did they keep him awake?”

He can’t quite read her tone, can’t tell if she approves or disapproves. He won’t change his mind just because she has a problem with it, it’s what’s best for Clint right now, but it would still be nice to know she’s on his side in this.

“We found time-stamped footage that suggests he didn’t sleep the entire time,” he says. 

“So, ninety-some hours then.” Her voice is grim.

“Something like it.”

“He must be a mess.”

“Little bit,” he sighs. He pushes his glasses up and rubs at his eyes. “He’s going to hate me.”

She doesn’t sugarcoat it. “Probably. But if we’re lucky, he might not remember it.”

He recognizes the ‘we’ as Natasha’s subtle sanction of what he’s going to do. It’s a small relief in the whole unpleasant situation. 

And Phil too hopes Clint won’t remember that. Along with a few other things. The wild mood swings. The uncontrolled tears. The fear and confusion. It only partially comes from wanting to spare Clint’s pride. A much bigger reason is the minefield Loki left behind in Clint’s head when it comes to control. Or rather, the lack of it.

“How are things on your end?” he asks Natasha.

“If we’re not making progress before the day after tomorrow, Cameron says he’s calling it off. I’m not complaining. I can’t wait to get out of this mosquito infected hell hole.”

He grins tiredly. “What, the magic of the midnight sun isn’t making up for it?”

“Mosquitoes, Coulson,” she says, wholly unamued. “ _Billions_ of them. And horse flies. And gnats. Why the hell would anyone with that kind of money settle here?”

“The aforementioned magic of the midnight sun?”

“Right,” she snorts. 

Phil glances into Clint’s room. “I should go,” he tells her. “I’ll be in touch.”

“Leave a message if you can’t reach me. I’ll call you back.”

“Will do.” He pauses with his hand on the door. “And Natasha?”

“Yes?”

“Happy hunting.”

She huffs out a laugh. “Oh, trust me, if I get inside, I will enjoy the hell out of stalking him across a glass of wine in his ridiculously oversized dacha.”

“At least he’s not the kind of guy to take his dates camping in the wilderness around his hideout. You should be grateful.”

“ _He_ should be grateful. I would have to kill him before we get the intel. By accident, of course.”

“Of course,” Phil echoes drily and Natasha ends the call.

He pockets the phone and heads back inside. Clint is still sleeping. Phil checks his watch. Almost twenty minutes now, and that’s longer than the other times. Maybe fourth time’s the charm, and he will stay asleep now.

A few minutes later the nurse is back with a single pill in a small paper cup and a larger cup with water and a straw.

“He should start to feel the effects of it fifteen, twenty minutes after he takes it,” she says quietly as she sets both items down next to Phil. She hesitates. “Do you want me to stay?”

Phil shakes his head. “It’s probably better with just me here if he wakes up. He’s a bit... skittish. Seeing someone he doesn’t recognize might make it worse.” 

She nods. “You know where the button is if you need me.”

The moment the door closes behind her, Phil’s phone trills with a notification. He doesn’t know if it’s just co-incidence, but that’s when Clint wakes again.

“Easy, you’re okay. You’re safe.” Phil reaches over and turns on the lamp over the bed. He’s going to need more light for this.

“Make them stop.” Clint’s words are thickly slurred. “Phil, make them stop.”

At least he seems to know who Phil is this time, and that’s going to make everything a whole lot easier. “I have something here that will help.” Phil looks around for a remote to raise the head of the bed, but doesn’t find one. “Sit up for a second,” he instructs Clint instead. “I’ll be easier.”

Clint starts struggling to sit up. It’s slow and clumsy, and it looks like such a massive effort that Phil can’t just watch. “Here, let me help you,” he says, and gives Clint plenty of time to refuse the offer before sliding his arm behind his back and helping him up.

There's no violent reaction, Clint just sits there, his breath still a little harsh. 

“Put your hand out. Palm up.”

Clint obeys mechanically. His hand is trembling. Phil tips the pill into his palm and waits for the inevitable reaction, but Clint just looks at it blankly.

Then suddenly it must register, because he makes a short, distraught sound and pushes the pill back at Phil, shaking his head. Phil had honestly expected him to simply drop it, so he’s counting the fact that he didn’t as a win for now.

“It’s nothing strong, just something to help you fall asleep.” 

Clint moans. “I don’t wanna fall.”

Phil winces as he plays his own words back in his head. “I’m sorry, bad choice of words. It will help you _stay_ asleep. You won’t fall. I promise.”

“I will,” Clint insists. “They won’t—” He pushes his hand with the pill clumsily against Phil’s chest. “I don’t want it.” 

“I know you don’t, but you need sleep and it’s just not happening.”

Clint shakes his head again, and if this is what contrary three-year-olds are like, Phil is glad he’s never had kids. He feels bad immediately, because the comparison is unfair and unkind. Clint can’t help it.

“It’s this or a needle.” He firms up his voice, pours a large dose of _handler_ into it. “I’ll let you chose, but it’s going to be one or the other.”

He makes the words non-negotiable, and it feels like coercion of the worst kind, because they’re not in the field, not in any immediate danger, and if this works it’s not because Phil has suddenly made him feel at ease with it; it’s because Clint is too compromised to withstand the many years of self-conditioning that makes him default to Phil’s lead when things go to hell out there, when the intel is bad and his sightlines are fucked up, when there’s no way out. Exploiting that, even when it’s for Clint’s own good, feels like treading perilous ground, but Phil knows it’s the right thing to do.

“I’ll have them exchange it for an injection if that’s what you want,” Phil says when Clint doesn’t say anything, “but you need to tell me, Barton.”

He means it, he will give Clint the option, but he still picks up the water cup and holds it a few inches from Clint’s lips, hoping the unsubtle prodding will make him decide for once in his life to follow the road of least resistance. Phil just wants to get this over with and this is the quickest way.

Clint’s hand starts to shake, and Phil steels himself against the guilt. Clint needs to sleep. Phil focuses on projecting the calm, steady authority that has always worked with Clint, even in the early, turbulent days when he had bucked against anyone trying to assert dominance over him. For Phil, leadership has never equaled dominance, and maybe that’s why the two of them had been able to work together when other handlers had failed to channel Clint’s raw talent into something more than just useful. Into something extraordinary.

Phil keeps the cup raised and waits. Thankfully, it’s just a matter of seconds before Clint surrenders. He takes a watery breath that disintegrates into a defeated, choked sob as he slowly starts bringing the pill towards his mouth. It looks like it’s a struggle, and Phil knows Clint is fighting himself so hard.

For a second, he dares hope it will happen, but Clint suddenly stops, his hand halfway.

“Don’t make me.” Clint’s voice goes thick and wavering. “Please. Please don’t make me.”

Phil almost wishes he would put up a bit more of a fight, that he'd be angry, because this helpless passivity from someone so headstrong and stubborn feels wrong in a visceral way. But that’s a deeply selfish thing to wish for. Any escalation of this will only make it worse for Clint. 

Phil reaches out and carefully guides Clint’s hand up. The begging stops abruptly. Clint squeezes his eyes shut as silent tears start running. But there’s no resistance when Phil brings his hand up the last few inches, and it takes only a little more prodding to get him to clumsily put the pill in his mouth.

Phil brings the cup closer and directs the straw to his lips, nudges him to take a sip. “Drink,” he says, and Clint does, swallowing the pill.

It doesn’t feel like a victory.

“All done,” Phil says and puts the cup back on the table. “Good job.”

Clint turns away, curls up onto his side, and Phil wonders tiredly how it’s possible for someone to project such betrayed misery with their back turned. 

“You’ll feel a lot better when you wake up,” he says. He gets no answer, but he hadn’t expected one, either. Not really. He takes a deep slow breath, then another and tries to shed some of the tension that’s still coiled inside. It was the right thing to do. Clint will know that when he’s back in his right mind.

The sandwich still lies next to the water cup, and Phil picks it up, peels the saran wrap off without enthusiasm. He’s not the least hungry, but he hasn’t eaten for seven hours and the coffee he had earlier sits sour in his stomach. Eating gives him something to do while he waits for Clint to fall asleep. Fifteen, twenty minutes, the nurse had said. But if the pattern holds he will be out long before that, because falling asleep was never the problem, was it? The problem was the falling.

He lifts the top piece of bread. The sandwich is two slices of white toast with cheese made soggy from thin slices of cucumber. It tastes like dust in his mouth. He washes it down with the remaining water, pushing the straw to the side when he drinks.

He’s balling up the plastic wrap when he suddenly hears the rustle of Clint moving. He looks up to see him reaching behind him with his good arm, fingers fumbling over the sheet, stretching as far as he can without turning over. Phil watches, unsure what he’s trying to do; find the bedrails behind him, reach his phone, reach the call button.

It’s not until Clint raises his hand a few inches, stretches his fingers towards Phil in a gesture that simply can’t be misunderstood that he gets it. Phil leans forward, reaches through the lattice work of the bedrails with a feeling of relief so profound he feels pounds lighter. Clint might not like him very much right now, but he hasn’t shut Phil out completely. 

Phil’s position is awkward, and he scoots his chair closer, hooking his foot around a leg and dragging it forward. Clint’s position looks uncomfortable, too, with his arm stretched out behind himself like that, but Phil isn’t going to move or do anything that might make him let go, because he’s well aware that this might be temporary. Clint might wake up tomorrow and hate him, because good intentions don’t mean automatic absolution. Especially not with people like Clint, whose trust is hard-earned and easily lost. This is possibly the last respite before having to face that, before having to begin the difficult process of earning back whatever ground Phil lost here.

Clint’s fingers fumble against his sleeve. “You’ve to catch me,” he mumbles.

“I got you,” Phil says. “You won’t fall.”

“Prom’se?”

Phil leans closer and curls his fingers around Clint’s wrist. He squeezes it lightly, demonstrating his grip. “I promise.”

It doesn't take long before Clint is asleep again and his lax fingers slip from Phil’s wrist, but Phil holds on. He rests his forehead against the bedrails and closes his eyes. God, he’s tired.

It falls on him to make the difficult decisions, to push his people beyond their limits when needed, to send them knowingly into dangerous situations and weigh the value of the individual asset against the value of completing the objective. Having to do the last one is blessedly rare, but it has happened, he has dispatched people with the cold knowledge that if push came to shove that time, they would be considered ‘acceptable losses’. Somehow making Clint take that goddamn pill had felt almost as difficult. But Phil had done it. Because it’s his job. Because he doesn’t want Clint to hurt like this. 

He just wishes it didn’t make him feel like such a bastard.

* * *

By the time the muted noises from the corridor tell him the morning rounds are underway, Clint has been asleep almost three hours, hasn't even stirred, and Phil figures they should be in the clear now. He lets go of Clint's wrist and gets to his feet stiffly. He tries and fails to hold back the groan as his back protests. 

He pulls his jacket on and reaches over the bedrails to pull the covers up higher around Clint, careful not to disturb him. He catches the nurse who just started the morning shift at the nurses station and makes her promise to call him if Clint wakes up badly again. Then he heads out in the gray morning light to get some well-needed sleep of his own. He plans to be back before Clint wakes up.

~ The End ~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: Clint is deep into sleep deprivation and in very bad shape from it. He falls asleep readily enough, but he keeps waking up badly over and over. It gets to the point where the doctors want to give him a sedative/sleeping aid. Clint doesn't want it, but he’s too compromised by the lack of sleep to make a rational decision, so Phil, who is his medical proxy, overrides him. Clint is quite upset about it, but eventually gives in. Phil feels bad about it, but everything he does is out of concern for Clint.
> 
> (also, Clint totally forgives him. 100%. We don't get to see it, but that's totally what happens!)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Room 101](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27147191) by [JinxQuickfoot](https://archiveofourown.org/users/JinxQuickfoot/pseuds/JinxQuickfoot)




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